


The Kids

by Otterly



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: adoption au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 08:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12908520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Otterly/pseuds/Otterly
Summary: Skye Wilde and Jack Savage, siblings in every way but by blood, come back to Zootopia from college for winter break in utter disgrace. Between failed grades, self-loathing and their own crushing expectations, they feel as if they can't face their parents ever again.Then a missing mammal turns up, prompting a fox and a bunny to team up once more in hopes of bettering the world and themselves. The universe likes mirrors, apparently.





	The Kids

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if Toga invented this AU--he probably did--but he at least heavily inspired this and deserves credit.  
> Give him some kudos  
> possibly a little kiss  
> http://archiveofourown.org/users/Toga

“Hey, Skye?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“Aw! I love you too, little brother,” Skye, nine years old, says with a smile. She opens her arms. “Come here.”

The tiny toddling bunny hops into her lap and holds her close. He nuzzles his tiny pink nose into her chest, purring happily and desperately. “Is everything going to be okay?” he wonders innocently.

“Of course,” she lies. “It’s gonna be great, and then Mom and Dad will take us out for ice cream and that carrot linguini you like. And then we’ll see a movie. You’ll see, Jack.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“Because!”

“Because what?”

A clever retort. Skye’s left speechless by it as she tries to form a counter argument. The light from the fire is starting to hurt her eyes, but she ignores the strain. She stares into it, ignoring the sirens too as the chaos swirls around them. She holds Jack tighter. They’ll be out any minute. Fangmeyer and Grizzoli will drag them out and they’ll be un….uh, uncontrarian, no, unicorn, uh––sleeping but not on purpose, and then it’ll be a week before they’re fine and then she’ll be right. Skye strokes her little brother’s back, staring into the warehouse set ablaze by her-parents-know-what. “Because they’re Judy and Nick Wilde! They can do anything. And one day we’ll be just. Like. Them.”

* * *

 

It’s almost as if Jack had never left. It’s only been a year or three, after all, but he’s eighteen now. The air smells the same, though now he knows that it doesn’t smell like it does down in Deerbrooke County. Familiar sights are abound: kids playing even though it’s going to be night soon, mammals on their phones, rhinos not paying attention to their surroundings. All in all, Zootopia is just another city to him now. The only real difference between Zootopia and his apartment back at campus are a certain fox and bunny living in its borders.

It’s an important difference, though. He’s not terrified of any of the other, minor ones.

Home. He’s not coming back to it. Not yet, anyway. He might as well take a few days to really be with himself. And his uncle Finnick. The tiny old fox is going to be really jazzed to see him. Hopefully. He didn’t exactly call ahead. Out of character for him, he knows, but an early ejection from campus for winter break blindsided him this year.

The leather on the seat he’s sitting on is old and weathered, but it’s still smooth. He traces a finger across its cracks, spider-webbing in pattern. He kind of wants to look sideways at the pretty cab driver, but he figures that she’s had that done enough to her today so he keeps his head down. Maybe next time. He’ll hop into a cab before he leaves for school again and she’ll be there, and they’ll make conversation and fall in love and eventually get married in the midst of his career at the Zootopian Intelligence Agency.

Nah, that won’t happen, you daft idiot. Gotta stay realistic. You don’t want to be like Skye, now.

A ground floor apartment with stone steps and a mahogany door enters his vision. Jack pays the cab driver plus a five percent tip, trying to wink at her before he closes the door only to blink both of his eyes at the same time. He watches the car leave (slightly in despair) before turning around. Now or never, Jack.

Skip up the steps, jump over the last one and hop up to the door. Twitch your tail. Channel Mom’s innocent charisma and imagine that you’re using it to hustle your way into a job as the Commissioner of Police. Knock three times.

Finnick answers the door, graying at the tips of his ears but nonetheless failing to age, as foxes tend to do.

“Kid?” he asks. His voice is gravelly with surprise and pleasure. This is good. “What’re you doing here?”

“Uncle Finnick? Hi. It’s great to see you! Can I—“

“Yep, come in,” Finnick sighs, leading Jack through the front and into the foyer.

Jack follows, raising an his eyebrow. Something’s going on here. Why isn’t this a fight? Or at the very least, an argument? He’d hate for the last two hours of rehearsing this conversation in his head to go to waste. He clears his throat. “Uh, so why—“

Then he sees her.

The two of them walk into the living room, he sees her and it takes every fibre of his being to not get infuriated.

Passed out. Again. He doesn’t have to wonder how. There are two empty bottles of happy juice on the coffee table. How she never gets any booze in her fur, he’ll never know. Maybe she bleaches it on the regular. Or rolls around in flour.

“Skye,” he growls.

“Yep,” Finnick says. “You two can fight over my waffle maker. I know you guys love that thing.”

“What?” gawks Jack. “You’re not staying?”

“Nah. It was good to see you, Jackie, but I gotta get going. Visiting my sister across the country. Plane leaves in a few hours.”

“Oh…”

Jack feels a paw hold his. He and his “uncle” share a moment of compassion.

“Don’t let me catch you crying,” Finnick reassures him with a gentle smile. “If it’ll make up for the fact I can’t stay any longer, I can give you my room. Just don’t do anything weird with the bed. Or in the bed. Or get anything on the ceiling. God, please don’t get anything on the ceiling. I can’t clean another ceiling after what your Dad did to my last one.”

“Uh, noted.”

 

* * *

 

Morning.

Skye’s head hurts, pierced open by the obnoxiously serene morning light. Pretty logical, though. She spent most of last night trying to drown her liver in booze to flush out all the reactions, compounds and elements that have plagued her so. But at least the couch is warm with her body heat, creating a nice toasty mixture of her scent and Finnick’s—pleasant and just a little sexy.

What isn’t pleasant, though, is the third smell she happens to smell. Bunny.

Her heart stops for a second—but no, it couldn’t be, Finnick wouldn’t snitch—and she relaxes once she hears the simmer of food from the kitchen and a quiet, angry muttering.

Home again, and she’s not alone, it seems. Been a while since they’ve seen each other, what with her living in another country and all. But that’s not important. They’re reunited! Skye and Jack, back in the city they grew up in (as boring as it is now that she’s aged). She’s happy enough; her brother’s probably the one mammal in the world who could even begin to understand her right now.

Skye stands. After some struggle. She sighs, walking over to the kitchen bleary eyed, half blind and barely seeing.

“You look like heck,” Jack greets her.

“Language, Mr. Savage,” she chides.

He blows a raspberry, to which Skye blows one in response. “I missed you, Jackie.”

“I missed you too.”

She waddles over, flops her butt onto a fennec sized chair and flops her chin onto the surface of the dining table, closing her eyes as she obnoxiously awaits her food.

“Manners, Ms. Wilde.”

“I don’t need any when I’m around family.”

“Is that why you don’t even care that you smell like a skunk’s gym towel?”

“A little bit. Heh, you should be glad that you don’t have a fox’s nose.”

“Should I? Maybe. Yeah––no, yeah! Bunnies are just better, I suppose.”

A dish is placed on the table and from it, the scent of bug bacon and waffles floats through the air like a delicious cloud. A chin lays itself on her head, almost purring but not quite. An arm holds her close.

Her brother’s scent surrounds her. Cinnamon and a hint of black pepper. He smells so much like home.

 _Ugh_. She reminds herself to buy Jack some new cologne when she has the chance.

“Are you avoiding Mom and Dad too?”

“Do I even have to answer that?”

“You know it’s only one week until they’re expecting us, right? They’re gonna call us at any time now.”

“Well, I don’t know about you but I feel like a failure and I can’t face them like that, so let’s not talk about it anymore. Deal?”

“Deal,” she agrees. “And you’re not alone there, little brother.”

Skye lifts herself up as Jack takes himself off of her to get to his seat at the table. They portion their breakfasts equally, and eat with a comfortable silence and vigor. It’s been a while since they’ve talked, so it’s to be expected that they wouldn’t have much to talk about. Conversation will come in time.

For now they just enjoy each other’s presence. The quiet scrapes of fork against plate dizzy their brains into a comfortable lapse of time.

And then Jack breaks the silence (after they’re done eating, of course), because they’ve both been thinking up grand speeches about why they’re home early and you don’t need to tell me why _you’re_  here if you don’t want to and all of that, but from the look on his face he can’t stand it anymore.

“So, let’s get on the same page,” he almost groans. “Tell me why you’re feeling down.”

For a second, Skye considers lying, and in the second following she decides not to lie to family; she should only avoid, which she can’t right now. She clears her throat. “I failed chem because I was putting all my time into robotics club, which wasn’t worth it anyway because we just ended up losing to some  _rats_  from another uni. Also, guys and girls won’t stop hitting on me—they have this cultural thing for white fur over there—so that’s nice but it’s also driving me _insane_.”

“Oh,” Jack says. This is a lot to process. “Well, if it helps you feel better, I slacked off and failed my Romantic Era studies class. And I applied to that internship at the ZIA.”

“Me too, actually,” she gasps. “Have you heard back from them? Because—“

“I haven’t.”

Skye exhales. “Carp.”

“Hey, Skye? I know that this might sound crazy but like, maybe we’re meant to do better things.”

“Better? Better than making the world a better place?”

“Yeah, like…taxes or accounting, or something. We’re smart enough to get into good law schools!”

“Right but we’re also smart enough to _not_  to go law school,” Skye deadpans. “But I get what you mean. Thing is that you can’t—“

“Say this kind of stuff around Mom and Dad? Of course not. I’m not stupid; It’d break their hearts. But we're going to have to. You can't lie to them. They have, like, truth vision or something.”

Skye nods proudly. “I think that's just a result of them raising us, but good point. That just gives us more incentive to not signal the fact that we've come home early, which is pretty fine by me so let’s put a pin in this conversation and never mention it again until we’re at our lowest, which'll probably be the moment we have to go home. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Splendid.”

Jack rises to get the dishes, but she stops him. She gathers the plates herself and starts to wash up.

It’s a curious coincidence to her. Two star children and students having such hard luck. She wonders if it’s not some sort of weird conspiracy theory. Maybe some villain from back in time is stopping the two of them from being amazing so they won’t take him down in the future. More likely though? It’s themselves and no one’s fault but their own. But, well, the villain would be super nice.

Her phone buzzes. She pulls it out and reads the message before calling “Jack! We’re going out!”

“Where?” he asks from the other room.”

“Jenny wants to hang out. I texted her telling her I missed her last night and I guess she misses us too.”

“Who?”

“You know her. You know, _Jenny_.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

 

* * *

 

Jenny beams from her seat on the bench. “Sorry for asking you guys to come out so suddenly, but I didn’t want to come home so soon after work.”

“I don’t know who you are, but it’s a pleasure to.” Jack smiles politely.

Skye squeaks with glee. “You have a job? Where?”

“ZPL branch out in Tundratown.”

“Oooh, will you help me rob all the books?”

Metal creaks from the hinges of the swings. They’re badly in need of oiling but whoever’s supposed to take care of this place isn’t doing too bad of a job. At least everything else seems clean. Jack examines the apparatuses scattered across the sand, and he’s pleased to see that he isn’t scared of getting tetanus from any of them.

“So this is what college kids do in Bearruskia, do they?” he asks. “Hang out in playgrounds?”

Skye winks. “Only when their little brothers are weighing them down by being too young to _actually_  have fun, yes.”

At least everyone’s having a good time, he thinks to himself. Zootopia as a whole might not be in his favorites list right now but Jenny’s turning out pleasant enough. Unfortunately for him, his childhood memories are a little…not there.

He watches Skye talk to the ermine out of his peripherals, not participating due to his preoccupation with the hot chocolate in his paws. The two of them grew up with Jenny, apparently. Their apartments being side by side always made it easy to hang out whenever they wanted. Or so the girls say. If you’d ask Jack, he’d say that the slender ermine is absolutely stunning. And also that she’s some sort of Total Recall kind of imaginary friend that Skye’s suddenly remembering. But at least she’s pretty pretty. Like, she’s not _pretty_  pretty, but there’s a tangible charisma whenever she talks. Like the words that she’s saying are drugging the surrounding air. Or maybe Jack’s just smitten for her. He’s willing to admit to that possibility. In his head.

“Makes sense. Any thoughts, Jack?” Jenny asks. Skye’s turned back to look at him as well and, judging by the look on her face, she knows that he hasn’t been listening for the last minute.

“Um,” he gawks. “I don’t know. Run that by me again?”

“We were talking about how your Dad might be retiring soon.”

“As Commissioner?” Jack asks. “Why?”

“Age,” Skye says. “The man’s like, ten years older than Mom.”

“Kinda hot, if you ask me.”

Skye shoots Jenny a glare.

“It’s sad,” Jack intervenes before Skye can go off on a tangent about their parents’ age difference. “Sure, he’s had a long life and all but career-wise he’s only had like, thirty — I think, it’s hard to keep track — years on him. Never really thought of Dad as someone who…got _old_ , now that I’m thinking about it.”

His voice wavers enough to be humiliating, so he pretends to launch into a coughing fit before sipping at his hot chocolate again.

“Sooo, you guys glad to be back in Zootopia?”

Jack and Skye look at each other, and then the ermine, and then each other, and then back to the ermine. They shake their heads.

“Everything looks the same and my life’s a mess,” he admits. “So not really.”

“I agree.”

“Seriously? The city’s been going through major renos in the past like, sixth months.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Came in through Savannah. Didn’t really think I needed to take a tour of my own city.”

“Same.”

“You clearly heckin’ do!” Jenny cheerily asserts as she stands up. Her streamlined body wiggles around as she paces before them. “Let’s check it out! I mean, it’d beat sitting around a playground. No offence. I probably should’ve figured that neither of you would actually get up to something reasonably fun.”

“Blame Jack!”

“Hey!” he snarls, indignant. “If Jenny hadn’t called us up––thanks for that, Jenny, by the way, I still don’t remember you but you’re very nice––then most of your plans would’ve involved me waiting around for you while you skulked around the liquor store!”

“That’s not true,” Skye admonishes. “I was actually gonna suggest that we do that thing I’ve always wanted to do in the Rainforest District.”

“The one that involved scaring strangers and seeing if they’d slip or not? I don’t think I needed to tell you about how _dumb_  that sounds.”

“You were down for it in the tenth grade!”

“Well we’re not _in_  the tenth grade anymore, are we?”

“Your _height_  begs to differ.”

“What a coincidence, so do your tits!”

“For like the seven thousandth time foxes _don’t grow_ ––“

The fox and the bunny nearly run into the ermine crashing into the space between them, her arms stretched out wide as to separate each sibling from their target. “Okay, okay! You’re both the worst. Let’s get a move on before you need to assert your points for a thousandth time.”

Jack, still staring daggers into Skye with his eyes, speaks first. “I still have no idea who you are so I can’t argue with that. Alright, where?”

“The tram, obviously!” Jenny chirps, receiving two blank looks from the siblings (Jack’s assuming, he’s too huffy to look at Skye right now).

“That thing’s all crowded and dirty,” he says.

“Not at this time of day. Everyone’s at work! Not _everyone_ , because Zootopia’s huge, but basically everyone. Come on. It’ll be fun! Zootopian trains are like no other, or so say the travel ads.”

He (no longer huffy) shrugs at Skye in a silent exchange of words: What do you think?

She shrugs back: Alright, I guess.

They open their mouths at the same time––

“Fine.” “Fine.”

“Jinx!” squeals the fox. “You owe me the rest of that hot chocolate!”

 

* * *

 

Wow. Wow! How mundane can a city get? The streets are exactly the same as Skye remembers them. She’s so far unimpressed with the minor changes that Jenny points out as they all walk along some sparsely populated sidewalk––she’s not sure which. Like, are you kidding? Of course they’d finally fix that stoplight. Dad wouldn’t shut up about it whenever he had the chance to. Of course they closed down that doughnut shop in favor of that taco shop. This area’s filled with predators and there are plenty of better doughnuts a few blocks away. Of course the park’s bigger. The view from the top of the hill is amazing.

In the minutes between this minute change and that, Jenny’s attempted to find some common ground with Jack. “You really don’t remember the time we replaced all the sugar in your apartment with salt?”

“No,” Jack shakes his head. “What else have we done, according to you?”

“We once tried to get married but we couldn’t find a minister so we stole your mom’s credit card to pay for a certificate online.”

“Wait, really?”

“Kind of. I wanted to stop you from stealing the card but you wouldn’t listen.”

“ _I_ did this?”

“You were a wild kid. Don’t you remember––“

Skye tunes out as she notices that the sun’s starting to rise, vindicated by the retreating clouds. She checks if anyone’s paying attention to her before giving it a wink. She never believed in that fox shamanistic stuff, but her Mom made sure she at least knew the basics behind it. Maybe the sun would bless her with something interesting today because so far? Nothing too impressive. She supposes that maybe she should feel a little more nostalgia than her brother, but she’s finding it hard to feel anything right now. A street’s just a street.

She looks back at her companions. “What street is this again, Jen?”

“We’re coming in on Acacia. Why?”

“Don’t know. Just wondering. Hey — how long till the train?”

“We’re there, dummy,” snipes Jack.

And so they are. Skye wonders how she forgot that Zootopia had underground stations as well as surface level ones. Maybe  _there is_  more to learn about the city than she thought. Oh, the wonders of public transportation. How exciting.

They all get tickets for the secondary expo line, wait for the bus for two minutes (during which she and Jenny talk about boys while Jack pretends not to listen in with his big stupid ears _they’re obviously twitching_ ) and then get a few seats at the front in a surprisingly empty car. Jenny was right: only one or two mammals seem to be on with them. It’s a little eerie, but Skye chooses to interpret the situation as peaceful so she can avoid that aneurysm she constantly feels coming on.

The doors close. Finally. The train begins to move.

Dark. They launch into it at fifty kilometres per hour, and Skye sees nothing but stone and rails. She yawns, draping an arm over her brother’s shoulders. Jenny’s behind them, hogging two seats.

“Skye?” she hears from beside her, quietly. “Is it weird that I still have no idea who Jenny is?”

“I’m right here, you know.”

But neither of them get an answer. Purple light enters the train through the glass windows, streaming in and bathing the three mammals in dusk. Skye leaves her seat, getting a better view from the glass in front of them. She waves at Jack to come follow, transfixed by the view as the train speeds into the Nocturnal District like a bullet.

“Uh,” she asks out loud. “When was the last time I was here?”

“Is that a rhetorical? Because we’ve actually never been,” Jack answers with a sense of wonder in his voice. “I never did, at least.”

“Why?” Skye asks, and it’s such a good question. Neon towers sprawl the landscape in front of her, trapped in an eternal night. The dome above them doesn’t seem like one at all — it projects such a faint, beautiful light that if she didn’t know any better, she’d think that it was her namesake. She should be disoriented. It _is_  daytime, after all. But she isn’t.

“I had no idea,” she murmurs.

How big is the dome, specifically? Why doesn’t she already know this? Why has she never been here? What else has she missed? Her eyes dart around, taking in billboards and signs and stores all dripping in glowing lights. She backs away and moves to a side window, where she spots foxes.

Foxes! She’s never seen so many of them. They’re out here in droves, walking around and smiling at each other and they’re all dressed so badly or so fashionably. There’s no medium. Skye giggles to herself. She’s reminded of the many trips she’s taken with her family to Bunnyburrow. Except this is more like—

“Those are the Dens,” Jenny explains, as if reading her mind.

The Dens. How has she never been here before? That’s the number one question on her mind. It’s beautiful. They pass The Dens, which transition into more and more neighbourhoods. Mammals she’s never seen so many of in one sitting. Possums, badgers, bats, raccoons, all sorts of canines that she’s never seen in her entire life.

“Skye,” her mother's voice echoes in her mind, “Where do you want to go?”

But their apartment was cozy. It was too cozy. She never wanted to go too far. She never needed to. Everyone together was enough, wasn’t it? Mom and Dad were always so busy and Jack would never willingly go here either for obvious reasons. Glowing Zootopian architecture stands tall, everywhere she can see. They would have had fun here. So much depth to this district…Skye clutches at her chest, transfixed.

“I really didn’t know,” she whispers. Jack leans his head on her bicep.

And then they move into darkness, but not for long. The rushing of water makes itself present, not long after that comes a cascade, washing over the glass surrounding them as they breach into light once more. Green trees ensnared by great vines surround them, punctuated by a thin fog that adds atmosphere more than it obstructs the view.

“Canal District?” Jack asks.

“Yep,” says Jenny, endlessly amused at the siblings’ cluelessness. “When was the last time you were here?”

Skye takes the opportunity to answer. “About…five or six years ago. Dad liked to take us to Rainforest but we never really went into the Canal District unless it was a special occasion—I’m not crazy, though, right? It never looked like _this_  when we visited.”

In sync with her friends (yes, she’s including her brother), she takes a look around. Zootopia in the twenties was lauded as a paragon of modern technology, breathtaking architecture and political equality. The verdant oasis before her reminds her exactly why. Where her emotions were captivated by the Nocturnal District, her mind can’t help but feel smitten when she sees the renovations that the city has made to Canal.

The bridges connecting the many islands seem to have been updated — there’s a certain charm lost with the old cobblestone but this has to be much safer. What’s more interesting though is what’s under the bridge: lanes. Like roads with crosswalks and intersections, Canal District has intergrated a bunch of lanes added to its waters. Skye spots one for the larger class of mammals (somewhere around above five feet) and one for the smaller ones (semi aquatics, like otters and beavers). Anchored buoys separate each, though they don’t completely divide they help more than the free-for-all that she remembers being there previously. Speaking of, the fox can just barely make out another new feature to the water — stoplights, under the water? That _would_  explain the easy flow that everyone seems to be moving in…

“Yo, what? I’ve been looking at this view for like two minutes. Why is the train stopped?”

“It always does this. Some of my friends think that it’s a tourism thing, some other friends think that it needs to let the water drip out of its engines or whatever. The tourism thing kinda makes sense, though: shows off the sector a little more so that you’ll visit.”

“Tourism? We all live in the same city! Kind of. I mean, I spend most of the year in another country—”

“Yet you haven’t been to the Nocturnal District till today and you didn’t know about the new addons over here.”

“Silence filled the room as Skye’s overcompensating mind struggled to—“

“I will _eat you_ , Jack,” the fox growls.

Jack opens his mouth to retaliate, but a white paw (not Skye’s) muffles it. Jenny slips in between the two, wrapping her arms around their shoulders. She gives a wink to her fellow girl on her left. “So I take it that you two are enjoying yourselves”

Skye takes her glare off of Jack to nod at Jenny. “For sure! Really, this was so nice. So many places we haven’t seen for some dumb reason or another, and I’m actually feeling a lot of things right now? Like, “wow, I really should have pushed my parents to go out more and not have been such a dumb nerd and why didn’t Dad take me to that one fox neighbourhood? Did he really hate his own race or something? Or maybe he just has unresolved feelings for his own kind that he’s never had to face until he had me, but then why was he friends with Uncle Finnick and I had a good childhood anyway so that didn’t matter’ and––what’s wrong?”

Eyes glimmering with wetness, the ermine holding her backs away and turns around, moving to clutch a nearby pole and look out the window. Skye follows in her wake.

“No seriously. What’s up? Like, actually.”

“My brother’s missing,” Jenny whispers.

And…uh. Skye’s ears twitch. Her nose quivers. She curls her toes and stretches them out again. “You had a brother?”

She yelps as Jack punches her arm. He glides in to chastise the crap out of her with his judgy eyebrows. “How don’t you remember Jake?”

“Wuh––”

“ _Him_  I remember. Ermine? Looks exactly like Jenny?”

“I have no idea.”

Jack rolls his eyes (still woefully judgy) at her, pretending like he’s not reaching down to push his hastily tucked phone deeper into his pocket. He turns to Jenny, who’s all but checked out of the conversation. He takes a moment to think of what to say and then decides to start off with at square one. “What you were saying about your brother?”

“He’s missing,” Jenny admits with a cracked voice. The train has started moving again, but none of them are concerned with the view anymore. “Look, I’m not gonna lie: I haven’t seen either of you in forever and it’s been nice hanging out but I didn’t really come here with completely pure intentions.”

“Completely serious here, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before today.”

Skye tilts her head. “What do you mean?” she says to Jenny. “We’re just––oh. Our parents.”

The ermine nods. “I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve tried to get in touch with your parents or _anyone_  that would care if we were family friends but _no one’s listening_. But you guys could…I don’t know.”

“So you want us to ask them for something,” Skye says, staring at her brother our of the corner of her eyes. He’s making a slow shake of his head while pretending to slit his throat with his finger. They can’t. They _can’t_. But what kind of fox would she be if she said no after all this? An old friend from like twenty thousand years ago agrees to hang out after she calls her out of nowhere and then she just denies her a favor like this? You’d be a typical fox, Skye, she thinks to herself. You’d be what everyone thinks a typical fox is and you need to be better, she hears her father tell her. She can see the desperation in Jack’s eyes, but there’s acceptance there. The look on her face must be giving her intentions away.

“We can do it” Skye says, grabbing Jenny’s shoulders. She stares into the ermine’s chestnut eyes before she draws her in for a hug. “It’s okay. We’ll sort it out. Don’t you worry. We’ll make sure that your brother’s found.”

The white furry tube she’s holding begins to quiver. “Thank you…”

And through the moment and the feelings, Skye sees Jack glaring at her like he’s never glared at her before.

 

* * *

 

“How do you manage to make me more stressed than I’ve been in the last three months despite only spending time with me for not even a _fifth_  of that?” Jack whines. He doesn’t care that he’s whining. Skye should care though. She’s the one making him whine. She’s why he’s doing this. He’s not doing this because he wants to. She’s making him. He stomps around the coffee table, glaring at the arctic fox on the couch when it happens that he’s facing her or in his peripherals. “I mean, _how?_  No, that’s not a rhetorical question. I want you to answer me. I want a definitive scientific hypothesis on why Skye Wilde is both the _worst_  fox in existence and how she manages to almost make me _faint_  at least once every three days unless she has an adequate amount of ridiculous plans or whatever you want to call them in her head and she’s enacted at least twenty-five! If stupid idea somehow clawed its way out of the void of abstractity and became a tangible being instead of a concept, whatever that being would be would have probably travelled back in time using its weird otherworldly powers and latched onto you from _birth_  and then lead up to this very _moment!_  The moment when I _leap off of the Desert Palms_. How did you _ever_  think that telling her we’d see our parents for her was going to work out? And who even _is she?_ ”

“Jack?”

“Yes?”

“Chill out,” Skye winks, looking very much like their father. “You really think I’d tell her an obvious lie without a plan to fix it? Don’t answer that because I would, but this time I didn’t.”

“You said so yourself: we can’t go home unless we want to tell our parents that our life dream that we've been _promising_ them is gonna happen–– _isn't_ gonna happen,” Jack stops his stomping and seethes, crossing his arms and tapping his foot against the wood floor. “We shouldn't even go _near_  home, which is why we can’t go anywhere near Peak Street.”

“Our parents don’t live on Pack Street.”

“Peak Street.”

“Oh, I thought you said Pack.”

“No you probably just– _ugh!_  Skye!”

“Okay, okay okay,” she waves her hands in the air as he creeps up to her. “Look, you wanna hear my plan? Because it’s pretty great.”

“Fine!” Jack huffs, standing still but ready to pounce.

He watches Skye take a deep breath. Slowly in, and slowly out. A little calming tic that they learned from their father. Mostly to be used for pitches and presentations. Which means that Skye knows that he won’t immediately come around to whatever concoction of terrible mistakes she’s stirred up in her head and this is definitely gonna be––

“We’re going to solve the case ourselves,” the fox says with a grin.

It’s Jack’s turn to breathe now. He nods his head. “So I was right,” he purrs. “Right? Yeah, I was right! Your plan _is a piece of horse_ ––“

“Language,” she chides sarcastically.

“Sorry. But your plan is awful.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it’s not, and here’s why: we were meant to do this. Upupup!” she shushes Jack when he tries so speak. “Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Two mammals, lonely and without hope somehow find each other without meaning to in the heart of Zootopia. And those mammals happen to be a fox and a bunny. And that fox and bunny _just so happen_  to stumble around and get information about a certain missing mammal that _just so happens_  to be a mustelid?”

Jack nervously rubs his stomach in an attempt to calm the nausea that welled up in him during that whole speech. “You’re saying that some higher plan wants us to find Jenny’s brother and that we’re the ones to do so because our parents did something similar, right? Not that we should become cops and get married?”

“…No.”

He nods. “Okay, good.”

“So?” Skye chirps. “What do you think?”

“Well, first of all: I hate it. Second of all? No.”

“What? _Why?_ ”

“Do I really need to answer that?” Jack asks, placing a paw on his hip. “We can’t pull it off.”

“Oh, of course we can. We’re smarter than lab rats on adderall, we’re passionate, lucky, have connections to the Tundratown Mob and we’re really hard to lie to because we’re so adorable,” Skye explains. She makes her way to the window and beckons Jack to come stare at the denizens outside. When he’s looking at the same view, she begins anew. “I know we can do it. It’s just a teensy little ermine––probably barely taller than you. How hard could it be? I mean, unless he’s dead in a ditch.”

“He’s dead in a ditch,” Jack grumbles.

“Wouldn’t you like to find out, though?”

“No.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas? Because this is all we have.”

“No.”

“…So? Is the view working on you like it is me?”

It’s not. The group of wolves walking by are really quite scary and Jack’s slightly paranoid that they’re going to come knocking on the door looking for Finnick and money, and just about everyone driving in the street is cutting each other off or tailgating or why would you ever think texting while driving was a good idea? And that bus advert of Gazelle lying seductively on the couch really screwed up her nose.

Jack bites his lip. Skye was always more persuasive than him. On the other hand, she was also more daring. And always got more hurt. He used to be the one to patch her bruises and cuts up before she learned to fix herself, once upon a time. Jack wasn’t––still isn’t good at dressing wounds. And speaking of wounds, he’s got it figured out by now that the wounds regarding his parents are still much too fresh to tread upon. Three days, he tells himself. That’s an extra day than Mom and Dad had. Should be fine.

Are you really going to do this?

Yes, yes you are.

“Fine,” he relents. “But we get 72 hours before we stop lying to Jenny and give ourselves up to our parents.”

“Really?” his sister squeaks. “Yay!"

"So how'd he go missing?"

"What?"

"Our ermine. How did he go missing?"

"Uh..."

"Right. Let's call Jenny."


End file.
